Posted on 03/22/2011 1:35:29 PM PDT by bronxville
SEIU Launches ‘Where’s The Note’ Campaign To Help Homeowners Fight Foreclosure
by on October 12, 2010
A coalition of groups led by the SEIU is launching a campaign to help homeowners capitalize on a growing foreclosure fraud scandal that has forced banks to halt foreclosures across the country. The campaign suggests a question for borrowers to ask when fighting foreclosure in court:
“Where’s the note?
Did the big banks lose your mortgage?”
The mortgage note is proof that a borrower owes a debt. Wall Street banks packaged and repackaged mortgages into exotic financial instruments during the housing bubble, and in some cases, they lost the note along the way. That’s where the potential fraud comes in. Ally Financial just expanded its review of foreclosures to all 50 states after an employee admitted to signing thousands of foreclosure affidavits without verifying the info in the documents. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are also taking that step and Wells Fargo is reviewing foreclosures in the 23 states where court approval is required.
A coalition of 40 attorneys general is planning to launch an investigation as Democratic members of Congress call for a national foreclosure moratorium . “Recent events have exposed a handful of banks that are throwing families out of their homes even though they don’t have the mortgage note that proves they actually have a legal right to do so,” says www.wheresthenote.com , the new site promoting the campaign. “There have been instances of two banks trying to foreclose on the same home, and in at least one case, of a bank trying to foreclose on a house where the homeowner had never even taken out a mortgage with anyone in the first place.” The website helps borrowers compose an email to their specific bank requesting the note. “To protect myself and my family, I need to know who owns my mortgage,” says the letter. “Within thirty days, I would like to know the name, address, and phone number of the bank or investor that owns my mortgage. Furthermore, in light of the recent allegations of foreclosure fraud, I demand to see the original mortgage note proving ownership over my home loan.”
Foreclosure defense attorneys and even a few members of Congress have encouraged borrowers to demand the note for some time. “You wouldn’t imagine that the lenders would be that slovenly that they would not be able to produce adequate documentation of the debt,” Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) told HuffPost last year . “But apparently a lot of times they really have been unable to.”
SEIU’s STEPHEN LERNER told HuffPost the campaign is part of a broader effort to FORCE BANKS to modify mortgages by giving borrowers’ lower interest rates and cutting principal, something banks have been reluctant to do. “The whole thing is just beyond obscene,” Lerner said of the fraud scandal. “All of this I think is going to lead to a much bigger grassroots response.” National People’s Action, PICO National Network, Industrial Areas Foundation, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations have partnered with the SEIU on the effort, which Lerner said will include a demonstration at an upcoming meeting of the American Bankers Association. http://industry-news.org/2010/10/12/seiu-launches-wheres-the-note-campaign-to-help-homeowners-fight-foreclosure/
An old article but perhaps relevant since the audio recording of Steven Lerner out today...
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/revealed-the-lefts-economic-terrorism-playbook-the-chase-campaign-for-a-coalition-of-unions-community-groups-lawmakers-and-students-to-take-down-us-capitalism-and-redistribute-wealth-power/
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) et al were giving bad advice. Steve Lerner states the campaign is part of a broader effort to FORCE BANKS to modify mortgages by giving borrowers’ lower interest rates and cutting principal, something banks have been reluctant to do. “Showing the Note” appears to have really been a ploy to agitate the people into an anti-bank protest.
How many people followed their bad advice and wound up losing there homes one might wonder...
Unions have NO stake in helping people (no more than governments) - people are being used to further Andy Stern, Steve Lerner's agenda of World Wide Socialism thus gaining money and power. (I'm not pro-JP Morgan either but...)
March 22, 2011 - Steve Lerner audio -
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/revealed-the-lefts-economic-terrorism-playbook-the-chase-campaign-for-a-coalition-of-unions-community-groups-lawmakers-and-students-to-take-down-us-capitalism-and-redistribute-wealth-power/
haha
Members of unions (whether by choice or through coercion in anti-right-to-work states) need to realize that. The sole purpose of a union is to enrich the fat cat goons who control the shakedown outfit. Unionism and La Cosa Nostra are partners and rooted in the same looter ideology.
In fact, I'll give the Mafia some small degree of credit since their extortion racket is at least up front about their means and motives. In contrast, unions fraudulently claim a moral high ground.
Actually, it is working and it’s just business. The debt holder has certain abilities to enforce the note, and the debtor has remedies, including the right to demand that the debt holder prove the debt is valid.
Some homeowners have had the notes erased and voided, other courts have demanded the notes. Law firms are under investigation by various states and law enforcement entities for forging notes and documents in the attempt to get a foreclosure.
A mortgage is a debt, only enforceable by the documents. The problem is that the original note has been transfered, often several times. The last time I refinanced, my note was sold three times before the first payment came due. If the debt holder cannot prove it actually holds a note payable by the debtor, a court can invalidate the note.
They made money on their dues like Hoffa banking Las Vegas instead of investing in corrupt politics.
The lost note strategy DOES WORK. There are too many cases where it does and IS working to deny it.
SEIU is just piggy backing on the works of others like good little commies.
You have to have a lawyer who knows the law and you have to have something other than a retired rubber stamp judge. The backlog of foreclosures was created in part because the titles are clouded. If this was not a valid strategy the nations largest title insurance company would not have stopped writing title insurance for mortages backed by notes held by specific banks.
(see Bank of America, Greentree, and a host of other failed/ing lenders)
for every union supervisor laid off 20 jobs are saved. (yes I just made that up)
I can attest to that from real world experience. For those who have seen my story mentioned previously here on FR, I apologize. For those new to my union-busting tale, read on...
Many decades ago before fleeing the union stronghold of Pennsylvania for Texas, I conducted a successful campaign to kick the organization out of our workplace. I educated my co-workers about the freedom we were losing at the hands of the union thugs. Once they were on the right side, we had a de-certification vote and ran the union out (kicking and screaming as it went).
Our workplace then thrived without the constraints of archaic union-enforced workrules. The business became highly profitable and we workers shared in the plenty. Gone was the "us against them" antagonism engendered by big labor. Things went so well that as the company grew even more profitable, we were able to take on more employees, selecting the best and brightest while shedding those whose only claim to competency was seniority (something precious to the mob rule of unionism).
“The lost note strategy DOES WORK. There are too many cases where it does and IS working to deny it.”
I’m not denying it. Yes, if one has the correct documentation. Do you happen to have a link as to the ratio?
“SEIU is just piggy backing on the works of others like good little commies.””
Exactly.
Debunking the Gospel of [Neil] Garfield
Apr 7, 2010 // by Steve Dibert // Mortgage Fraud News, Steve’s Blog // 17 Comments
Since starting MFI-Miami almost 2 years ago, I have received some pretty strange calls from people. I’ve had real estate agents call me who have bought 15 income properties and then try to claim they are victim of Predatory Lending. I’ve had people who have bought investment properties who thought because they watched two episodes of The Apprentice they’re as smart as Donald Trump. I have gotten calls from the conspiracy theorists who think the Obama Administration wants their property so they can build an internment camp on it when the armed UN hovercraft come skimming over the Everglades. These are some of the more interesting calls.
However, the most interesting calls I get are from Pro Se litigants. What are Pro Se litigants? Pro Se litigants are homeowners who represent themselves in court and usually have no training as a lawyer. They are usually people who think they know more than everyone else or have the attitude of “Why should I hire a lawyer when I can do it myself.”
As the saying goes, “An attorney who represents themselves has a fool for a client.” Here’s a case in point. I had a foreclosure client when I started MFI-Miami, who filed an answer to his foreclosure that he copied and pasted off Neil Garfield’s website, Living Lies. My client then tells me he was going file a federal civil RICO case against his lender because his wife’s “forged” signature violated interstate commerce laws which is a RICO predicate. When I asked him who told him he could do that, he claimed he read he could do it on Garfield’s site. I have since received dozens of calls from people asking me for free advice based on what they read by Neil Garfield.
I have received at least 6 calls in the past week from Pro Se litigants claiming that they don’t know what to do because their Florida judge laughs at them for demanding the wet inked copy of their note. This is one of those misconceptions out on the blogosphere that had its origin from the Living Lies site. The misconception is that if the servicer or the Trustee cannot produce the original wet inked note, then they lack legal standing to execute a foreclosure and therefore the debt obligation is now nullified. This is absolutely false. In Florida, the transfer affidavit or note must officially be on record with the county 60 days prior to a servicer or Trustee filing the initial foreclosure complaint. When the attorney files the foreclosure complaint, all they are required to do is attach a copy of the original note.
For those you who don’t know who Neil Garfield is, he is a self-proclaimed Foreclosure Expert who holds seminars across the country for lawyers and Pro-Se litigants helping them fight foreclosures. According to his biography, was an Economist, Accountant and he is a “Chairman Emeritus” of a consortium of financial service companies and claims to be the “ultimate insider” on Wall Street. (Page 4, Garfield Continuum Handbook) Yet, he never mentions which companies he has worked with or the positions he held. The state of Florida also has no license on file for him being an accountant.
If he was a Wall Street “Insider,” he was like Lon Chaney aka The Man of Thousand Faces because friends of mine in the media who cover Wall Street had never heard of him until he started doing seminars. He was a trial attorney in Florida from 1977 until 1993 and by his own admission to me when I attended his seminar in Orlando last May, has not done any litigation work since then.
He preaches that, “homeowners can walk into a foreclosure hearing and walk out owning their house free and clear.” (Page 5, Garfield Continuum Handbook)
He even preaches this on his website and it is over-simplified comments like this that draw people to his website looking for easy answers. Like a late night televangelist, Garfield delivers a lot of what on the surface appears to be easy solutions but in reality are very complex legal arguments. Unfortunately, for the homeowner, foreclosure defense is not easy. It is a lot of painstaking detective work and TILA rescissions happen in only one of out of 50-75 loans.
Neil Garfield’s theories make for great legal debate and table talk for foreclosure defense junkies and conspiracy theorists. However, in reality his theories are impractical for the average homeowner due to the astronomical fees of legal research and litigation that they would require. What Neil Garfield fails to understand or express to his seminar participants is that judges do not like going out on the proverbial limb and therefore will not make precedent making decisions.
In other words, Neil Garfield is great at talking the talk but is a little short on walking the walk. He lacks the practical litigation experience to transform his theories into reality. Even now if you read his blogs, attorneys as well as Pro Se litigants who are frequent contributors phrase their comments as if expressing opinion instead of fact.
Garfield has created a problem in judicial foreclosure states such as Florida. He has unleashed an army of Pro Se litigants who have clogged the courts trying to argue their foreclosure cases using theories they barely understand. They lack not only legal expertise but lending expertise. They are totally unprepared to argue their own cases and fail to learn or obey court procedure. Many of them go in to court trying to argue constitutional law or TILA and find themselves summarily dismissed by a judge. They then write comments on the blogosphere claiming the judicial system is corrupt and that corruption is a result of some mass government conspiracy.
What the Garfield seminars fail to express to these litigants is that foreclosure laws vary from state to state and if you are fortunate enough to live in a judicial state like Florida or New York, judges want to hear state statute not federal statute unless it is relevant to your case.
This also creates another problem for the court system. The problem consists of the homeowners who have been successful in getting their foreclosures postponed. Fed by what they read on Living Lies, these pro se litigants begin having delusions of grandeur and begin believing they are the next Alan Dershowitz or Gerry Spence. They begin dispensing legal advice on the internet. The reality is, it was not the Gospel of Neil Garfield or the Pro Se litigant’s superior linguistic or legal abilities that got the foreclosure postponed but forces beyond the homeowner’s control.
In his 683 page handbook which is riddled with errors, he claims, “Neil has come out of retirement with one purpose in mind – to do all he can to counter the effects of the mortgage meltdown and save the people and the country from the disaster of created by free money using derivative securities that not even experts understood and targeting the least sophisticated members of society.”
This may sound charitable, but don’t believe the hype. At the end of the day, it’s all about the Bejamins. Garfield and his partner Brad Keiser use these seminars to market future consulting work and forensic audits from law firms and Pro Se litigants that attend their conferences.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with people making money and I don’t have a problem with the fees Garfield and Kaiser charge their clients, I do have an issue with what they preach and how they manage the expectations of what they preach to the average homeowner. This industry is filled with enough wannabe Elmer Gantrys or messianic types with no practical mortgage industry experience and the last thing it needs is to encourage more unqualified “healers” to come into this business which is what Garfield and Keiser are doing.
http://www.mfi-miami.com/2010/04/debunking-the-gospel-of-garfield/
There’s also a lot of good information in the comments - some pro and others anti with responses from Steve Dibert.
RATIO - 5 victories out 4400+/- aren’t good odds.
obvioiusly you have not been in the courtroom.
there are retired judges. (most past mandatory retirement of 70) who are placed on the rocket dockets and are no more than rubber stamps for mortgage companies.
Every single lawyer gets crackpot calls. However when the lawyer documents, and makes proper motions and if needed demands proper discovery they do win. Particularly in cases where there is notary misconduct, failure to register trusts, and a whole host of other flaws.
Miami has a notorious rocket docket in light of the odd man out rulings of the 3rd DCA of FL. That said, the other circuits of FL seem to have no problem reading the law.
it should be noted that in western states like oregon and washington banks and mortgage holders have now resorted to suing on the debt alone rather than the foclosure due to the title issues. This is to bypass the debt.
From the blog link it seems this person is more a bank appologist and is just knocking out any competition.
You also fail to mention that even the florida bar has a documented this for pro se litigants.
It seems you are focusing on the usual opportunits who sell what is otherwise freely available. (in the 80’s it was divident reinvesting programs, in the 90’s it was setting up multiple corporations, in the early 2000’s it was setting up corporations with ein numbers for credit repair.)
the law is the law and florida’s mortgage law is very specific. a mortgage’s promissory not is not a lost check scenario. Only the party that lost the note can enforce the forclosure not the subsequent holders.
You also miss out on the fraud work done by the three law firms who were handing most all those mortgage forclosures. The state attorney continues to investigate and now the lawyer of one of them is blaming the bank for forcing the fraud.
The whole situation regarding unions illustrates just how much the Democratic Party has changed.
Democrats have been pro-union since the 30s. However, Democrats took active stands against Mafia corruption and Communist infiltration of labor unions. For example, Democrats were instrumental in the expulsion of Harry Bridges’ ILWU from the AFL-CIO and putting Comrade Bridges behind bars. Robert Kennedy was the key actor in putting Jimmy Hoffa behind bars. Democrats of that day also opposed public sector unions.
Now, the Democratic Party has been co-opted by corrupt, openly communist unions, particularly the most corrupt and communist public sector unions.
Thusfar I just have you speaking. I would be interested in a few other people speaking and a ration.
I’m not trying to convince anyone. The information is here and people can do with it as they wilt.
ration = ratio
Stephen Lerner on CNBC: America Wants Wall Street to Quit Whining
By John Vandeventer on October 22, 2009 5:55 PM
Wall Street has a message for Americans who think it’s unfair that they take our tax dollars and pay themselves huge bonuses: they need that money for all their hard work.
SEIU’s Stephen Lerner went on CNBC today to debate a representative of Wall Street over the Obama administration’s decision to cap exec pay at seven bailed out firms.
According to Reed Smith’s John Martini, Americans need to stop “getting caught up” in this notion of fairness when it comes to Wall Street pay. Martini said the billions of dollars in pay and bonuses are required to keep attracting the talent that are responsible for big banks’ success.
That begs the question: what success? As Lerner points out, it’s the big banks that drove our country into a financial crisis; now they expect us to give them a multi-billion dollar pat on the back?
“People around the country are so tired of this myth that it’s such a sacrifice to make a half a million dollars,” said Lerner. “Next week at the bankers association meeting in Chicago from the 25th through the 27th, thousands are going to gather because they’re sick and tired of the whining from people who make enormous sums of money and then say ‘I’ll quit my job if you don’t give me a big bonus.’”
It’s three very entertaining minutes of television. Take a look:
http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&tag=stephen%20lerner&limit=20
Wall Street: Contracts for Me, Not for Thee
By Michael Whitney on August 5, 2009 9:12 AM
Citigroup - recipient of $45 billion in bailout funds - apparently isn’t feeling the economic crunch. In fact, it’s considering paying a $100 million bonus to one of its employees, protesting that it can’t tear up a contract.
Tell that to California state employees.
Almost 100,000 state employees in California are feeling the effects of California’s budget crisis - facing furloughs and wage cuts, thousands of state employees are realizing the realities of today’s economy.
SEIU’s Stephen Lerner compares the two vastly different situations in a segment on CNBC.
Watch it:
http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&;
tag=stephen%20lerner&limit=20
More of Steve Lerner here...
http://www.seiu.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&tag=stephen%20lerner&limit=20
He’s been trying to get this going for a long time without success. This is their last chance...
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